Canopy Volume as a Tool for Early Detection of Plant Drought and Fertilization Stress: Banana plant fine-phenotype

Irrigation and fertilization stress in plants are limitations for securing global food production. Sustainable agriculture is at the heart of global goals because threats of a rapidly growing population and climate changes are affecting agricultural productivity. Plant phenotyping is defined as evaluating plant traits. Traditionally, this measurement is performed manually but with advanced technology and analysis, these traits can be observed automatically and nondestructively. A high correlation between plant traits, growth, biomass, and final yield has been found. From the early stages of plant development, lack of irrigation and fertilization directly influence developing stages, thus the final crop yield is significantly reduced. In order to evaluate drought and fertilization stress, plant height, as a morphological trait, is the most common one used in precision-agriculture research. The present study shows that three-dimension volumetric approaches are more representative markers for alerting growers to the early stages of stress in young banana plants for fine-scale phenotyping. This research demonstrates two different group conditions: 1) Normal conditions; and 2) zero irrigation and zero fertilization. The statistical analysis results show a successfully distinguished early stress with the volumetric traits providing new insights on identifying the key phenotypes and growth stages influenced by drought stress.